... reply to this (and a private message of Stuart's): http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/message/4288 One of the things I have found about people who cannot become black-belt Wittgensteinians is that their language skills are poor. And it isn't language skills in the sense of being a good grammarian or English professor -- though some of that may be connected -- its poor "radar" for what language is doing. And hence you get the following: (a) a bumper-sticker approach to the issue ("the anything-goes approach to language"); (b) terrible counter-examples ("come over to my can of peas, and we'll lick it over a cup of puke" -- which, of course, still could make sense under given circumstances [can of peas = hobbit house; puke= a putrid drink]); (c) a failure to understand Wittgenstein; and, relatedly, (d) the failure to appreciate how structure exists in the absence of rules, definitions or determinacy. Also, there seems to be this concomitant psychological need to see words as things that bind people in certain ways, or else, "the world shakes," so to speak. Hopefully, when I complete the manuscript I am working on, you can both find help with these matters. (Be done in about 2 months). For now, some basics: 1. It is Russellian to say that words mean what dictionaries say or what is "commonly said." It is no coincidence that this view is linked with the view that logic dictates what is said, and that what cannot pass this test is not meaningful. This school of thought was overthrown by Wittgenstein. (Hallelujah). 2. Meaning is use means exactly that. There are no statist or political criteria. Majorities do not determine what people say. Only brains and their behavior do. What this means is that language is as language does. And that if X and Y "score goals" with whatever usages they do, there is no authority structure that can be appealed to that could invalidate the goals. (Cardinal Principle #1: meaning is use). 3. The ability of people to language, like the ability to do math, is not equal. These are the areas of the brain involved in language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Surfacegyri.JPG ; We can readily imagine that people who are gifted in this respect do not language the way people with ordinary regions language (in terms of capacity and insight -- in terms of "skilty"). (Why the culture understands this with mathematics but not language is only a prejudice) 4. One of the great problems with people who are language-challenged is that they think that what belongs to "metaphor" is something only the creative do with their spare time, and that this has nothing to do with being a vehicle for understanding. That is, they cannot make good use of the simile. Have you ever noticed that Wittgenstein was brilliant with the simile? Have you ever noticed how powerful similes are when understood? Ask yourself this: those of you who like symbolic logic and definitions -- are you good with simile? 5. Sigh. The issue with characterizing "getting angry" as "blowing up" is not one belonging to metaphor. To treat "blowing up" literally is to invite polysemy into the picture. As I have said several times, polysemy is not family resemblance -- it is the wrong family. And if you want a structure for language that is Wittgensteinian, there is your first law. 6. The reason why language can have the fluid character that it does and still facilitate communication is that brains are quite good at navigating sense. See Pinker in the Language Instinct. 7. I believe this thread began with whether Tiger could be called a "bachelor." There being no credible view that such a statement could not, in fact, be meaningful -- and that many might today call him that given his line of behavior for many years -- it is no wonder that this issue then turns ideological. Why a sermon on language when the case at hand falls apart? (see intro paragraph) 8. And now we end with our hero. I'm glad to see some of you saying things like "Wittgenstein had trouble here" and "I'm going further than him." This is so much better than pretending you are Wittgensteinian. Those who cannot handle these ideas need desperately to go to a ship that can bear you. (Preferably one on land). ON CATCHING EXQUISITE SENSE "A new-born child has no teeth." -- "A goose has no teeth." -- "A rose has no teeth." -- This last at any rate -- one would like to say -- is obviously true! It is even surer than that a goose has none. -- And yet it is none so clear. For what should a rose's teeth have been? The goose has none in its jaw. And neither, of course, has it any in its wings; but no one means that when he says it has no teeth. -- Why, suppose one were to say: the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it, so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. This would not be absurd, because one has no notion in advance where to look for teeth in a rose." PI, page 221. "Given the two ideas 'fat' and 'lean,' would you be rather inclined to say that Wednesday was fat and Tuesday lean, or vice versa? (I incline decisively towards the former). Now have "fat" and "lean" some different meaning here from their usual one? __ They have a different use. -- So ought I really to have used different words? Certainly not that. -- I want to use THESE words (with their familiar meanings) HERE.-- Now, I say nothing about the causes of this phenomenon. They MIGHT be associations from my childhood. But that is a hypothesis. Whatever the explanation, -- the inclination is there." p. 216 PI. "One might speak of a 'primary' and 'secondary' sense of a word. it is only if the word has the primary sense for you that you use it in the secondary one. ... The secondary sense is not a 'metaphorical' sense. If I say 'For me the vowel in e is yellow' I do not mean: 'yellow' in a metaphorical sense, -- for I could not express what I want to say in any other way than by means of the idea 'yellow.' Id. ON INDETERMINATE TALKING “But is it senseless to say: “Stand roughly there.” Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand – as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way … The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word ‘game.’).” See ¶ 71. “If I tell someone ‘stand roughly here’ – may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too?[1]… But isn’t it an inexact explanation?—Yes; why shouldn’t we call it ‘inexact?’ Only let us understand what ‘inexact’ means. For it does not mean ‘unusable.’ See ¶ 88 “I use [names] without a fixed meaning. (But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.)” See ¶ 79. “How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: “This and similar things are called ‘games.’” … But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn” See ¶ 69. 71. One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. ---“But is a blurred concept a concept at all?” --- Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need? See ¶ 71. “But then the use of the word is unregulated, the ‘game we play with it is unregulated.’ ---- It is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too. See ¶ ??. OTHER RELATED MATTERS: “people nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc, to give them pleasure. The idea THAT THESE HAVE SOMETHING TO TEACH THEM – that does not occur to them. [all caps substituted for italics – sw] CV, 1939-1940, p.36 "I think I summed my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written as a POETIC COMPOSITION. It must, as it seems to me, be possible to gather from this how far my thinking belongs to the present, future or past. For I was thereby revealing myself as someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to do." from Culture and Value, 1933-34, page 24 ... “I just took some apples out of a paper bag where they had been lying for a long time. I had to cut half off many of them and throw it away. Afterwards when I was copying out a sentence I had written, the second half of which was bad, I at once saw it as a half-rotten apple. And that’s how it always is with me. Everything that comes my way becomes a picture for me of what I am thinking about at the time. (Is there something feminine about this way of thinking?)” CV 1937, p.31 “Why don’t I call cookery rules arbitrary, and why am I tempted to call the rules of grammar arbitrary? Because I think of the concept “cookery” as defined by the end of cookery, and I don’t think of the concept of “language” as being defined by the ends of language. You cook badly if you are guided in your cooking by rules other than the right ones; but if you follow other rules than those of chess you are playing another game; and if you follow grammatical rules other than such and such ones, that does not mean you say something wrong, no, you are speaking of something else. PG 184-185 … [major snipping here -- sw]: “Language is not defined for us as an arrangement fulfilling a definite purpose” (190), meaning the “connections in the mechanisms of language” are such that we get to supply them. (191) [unquoted part my paraphrase – sw]. … “ ‘Language’ is a word like ‘keyboard…’ ” (192) … footnotes: ________________________________ [1]“Every other one” refers to others that are more or less exact. His point is that if you specified an exact location, the exactness would only be relevant if the border was exceeded, which in many cases would render the border superfluous and unnecessary, because one only needs to talk with fixed borders for those fixed purposes. Also, in cases where you stand directly on the border, more exactness would seem to be needed. And if you ever did specify a perfectly exact boundary, it would seem to be pointless unless you needed a perfect accounting of something directly on the border. He writes, “And let us consider what we call an ‘exact’ explanation in contrast with this one. Perhaps something like drawing a chalk line round an area? Here it strikes us at once that the line has breadth. So a colour-edge would be more exact. But has this exactness still got a function here: isn’t the engine idling? And remember too that we have not yet defined what is to count as overstepping this exact boundary; how, with what instruments, it is to be established. And so on.” (See ¶ 88, PI). Elvis has left the building. Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq. Assistant Professor Wright State University Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860 Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html ========================================= Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/